Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention generally relate to identification of downhole oil/gas well drilling and completion equipment and correlation of input data with the equipment to improve inventory and planning operations.
Description of the Related Art
Exploration, production and completion of hydrocarbon wells require numerous pieces of oilfield or downhole equipment, such as mud motors, drill bits, underreamers, jars, drill collars, measurement-while-drilling (MWD) or logging-while-drilling (LWD) tools, cementing plugs or floats, and other tubular goods including drill pipe, casing and expandable casing, liners and expandable liners, and sand screens. Much of this equipment lasts for many years of usage such that the equipment may be reused for different jobs. To therefore mitigate costs associated with the use of the equipment, rental companies supply customers with their needs for such equipment by maintaining the equipment at inventory locations such as pipe yards.
One issue that rental companies encounter involves assessing whether the equipment may be safely and reliably reused or is at the end of its lifespan. Use and rotation of the drill pipe, for example, in the hole leads to material fatigue and erosive and corrosion wearing of the inner and outer diameters of the drill pipe. Accordingly, inspections of the drill pipe detect wall wear and any other defects to aid in ensuring that the drill pipe does not fail downhole. The drill pipe passing inspection returns to the pipe yard for subsequent rental without further analysis of inspection results by the rental company while the drill pipe failing the inspection is discarded, otherwise retired or de-rated.
Individual asset identification represents another issue that rental companies confront. Some inventory management techniques may employ unique serialization of each drill pipe. However, prohibitive costs and lack of acceptable serial numbering options limits application of any asset tracking achievable by the rental company utilizing such serialization and results in deficiencies with respect to performing desirable business functions of these companies.
Various approaches enable differentiating and identifying each drill pipe. For example, the drill pipe may include attachments incorporating steel stenciled serial numbers, which tend to wear or erode away over time, require manual inspection & replacement, and may need cleaning to be visible. When the stenciled number is located in a hole drilled or milled slot in an outer diameter of the drill pipe tool joint, the stenciled numbers may correspond to numbers on a plug inserted into the drilled hole in order to identify the drill pipe if the numbers wear off the plug or the plug falls out, but small character size required for enough digits in the drilled hole affects legibility. Attempts to identify drill pipe with radio frequency identification tags affixed to the drill pipe require expensive, complex and/or obtrusive attachment configurations that may harm performance of the drill pipe and often cannot withstand operations downhole.
Therefore, there exists a need for methods and apparatus for identification of downhole equipment and correlation of input data with the equipment to improve planning and inventory operations.